ACLS International Summer School 2016

Education Academy of Computational Life Sciences (ACLS), Tokyo Tech, is a graduate educational program that aims to train potential leaders who will play an active role internationally in multiple fields in life sciences and computer science. We organize summer schools annually to offer students opportunities to (i) develop leadership by organizing the summer school as students committee, and (ii) enhance international multidisciplinary networking and scientific exchange between life sciences and computer sciences through various activities.

The core activity of the summer school this year is the group work. We are planning to include lectures and site visits to help students deepen their thoughts and ideas on the group work discussions. There will be a poster session by all the participants to get to know each other.

Organizer

Education Academy of Computational Life Sciences (ACLS), Tokyo Institute of Technology

Co-organizer

BEST program (Broadening Experiences in Scientific Training), Cornell University

The summer school this year was coorganized with BEST Program (Broadening Experiences in Scientific Training), Cornell University. BEST provides graduate students and postroctorial scholars training opportunities to prepare for careers beyond conventional academic research.

Theme

Science to solve global healthcare issues

Date

28 Aug - 2 Sep, 2016

(* 28 Aug to 4 Sep for participants from Japan, 3, 4 Sep for the flights)

Venue

Weill Cornell Medical College, Cornell University

Belfer Research Building

413 East 69th St., New York, NY 10021

https://goo.gl/maps/j43xpiB2TEm​

Group Work

The primary objective of Group Work is to propose a research or business plan which would meet one of the healthcare or life science related requirements stated in the "Sustainable development goals" as proposed by the United Nations. Students are expected to exploit what they learned in lectures and poster sessions during the summer school.

To check the list of goals at once: see this pdf file

Update: Group Work results

1st Place Award
Reduce Inequality by Universal Advanced Prosthetic Technology
Alejandra Mejia Tobar, Jailson Brito Querido, Nao Furuta, Hitoyoshi Yamashita, Aleksandar Zdravkovic, Chen Cheng (Group C)

2nd Place Award
Community-Research Cycle for Crop Improvement
Robert Brown, Iou Ven Chang, Alfredo Esquivel-Chavez, Ziyun Ding, Tomoya Hayashi, Wakako Sakamoto (Group A)

3rd Place Award
Fighting Climate Change with Next Generation Cows
Yuichi Yokochi, Mayuri Sathiyananthavel, Elena Gonzalez Ligia, Hikaru Watanabe, Petko Fiziev (Group F)

Participants

35 graduate studedents working in life science, bioinformatics, computer science and related fields who are interested in interacting with students in different diciplines and natioalities.

>> Accepted participants list 

Schedule

Sunday, August 28th

• Kickoff

  • ​Briefing about the Summer School
    Hitoyoshi Yamashita (Tokyo Tech)

  • Introduction of ACLS Program
    Wei Ming Lim (Tokyo Tech)

  • Introduction of BEST program at Cornell University
    Susi Varvayanis (Cornell University)​

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• Flash Talk and Team Building Activities 

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Monday, August 29th

• Site Visit and Lecture Program: United Nations Headquarters
  >> Reported on the SDG Action Campaign website!

  • Tour of the United Nations Headquarters

    • Tour of the Sustainable Development Goals and Refugee exhibition

  • Lecture and Discussion sessions
    Jasmine Jaruphand and Alice Chen (SDG Action Campaign, United Nations Development Programme)

    • What is Sustainable Development?

    • Why is important to deal with Sustainable Development?

    • Focus areas of goals 2 (Zero Hunger), 3 (Good Health and Well-being), 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation) and 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure).

    • Challenge to the group (How can scientists, especially in information technlogy field, contribute to finding a solution to tackle the wold's problems)

​​​

• Site Visit and Lecture Program: New York University

  • Jef D. Boeke (New York University)

    • Introduction of Institute for Systems Genetics

    • Introduction of NYU's activities for Industry-university cooperation

  • Nadrian C Seeman (New York University)
    DNA: Not Merely the Scret of Life.

  • Jef D. Boeke (New York University)
    Synthesizing Genomes.

  • Facility Tour of NYU
    > The yeast art works by students!

• Poster session (Setup, 1st session)​

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Tuesday, August 30th

• Invited Lecture sessions

  • Leslie Vosshall (The Rockefeller University)
    Building a Mosquito Sensory System to Hunt Humans.

  • Christopher E. Mason (Cornell University)
    Single Cells, City-scale, and Space Station Genomics

  • Scott Keeney (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center)
    Breaking and Chewing DNA in Meiosis

• Poster session 2nd, 3rd session

• Group Work 1st session

​

Wednesday, August 31st

• Group Work 2nd session

• Group Work : Feedback session

• Invited Lecture sessions

  • Harris Wang (Columbia University)
    Engineering the Human Microbiome.

  • Shotaro Ayukawa (Tokyo Tech)
    Design, Modeling, and Construction of Synthetic Gene Circuits.

  • Yuri Matsuzaki (Tokyo Tech)
    Protein-protein Interaction Prediction by Exhaustive Rigid Docking.

  • Shuli Shwartz (Cornell Tech)
    Introduction of Cornell Tech Programs.

• Group Work 3rd session

• Poster removal

• Group Work: Report submission

Thursday, September 1st 

• Group Work 4th session (final)

• Group Work Presentations

​

• Panel Review

  • Paul Feinstein (Hunter College)

  • Scott Keeney (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center)

  • Brian Kelly (Cornell University)

  • Koji Murakami (Rakuten Inc)

  • Susi Varvayanis (Cornell University)

  • Yasunori Aizawa (Tokyo Tech)

  • Yutaka Akiyama (Tokyo Tech)

• Cultural Exchange Dinner

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Friday, September 2nd 

• Facility Tour
  • ​Option 1) New York Genome Center
  • Option 2) The Rockefeller University
  • Option 3) Rakuten Marketing​​

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• Intercultural Study (Arranged by the participants)

Saturday, September 3rd

Departure

​Poster session

The poster session is planned on August 29th and 30th to help students getting to know each other. Participants are asked to present posters that introduce their research topic with good background explanation.

NOTE: As the summer school attendees derive from a very diverse academic background especially from computational sciences to life sciences, we humbly seek your cooperation to tune your abstract and poster content to a comprehensible level to attendees of all majors.

Poster guideline

1. Poster Format
   1. ​Size: A0
   2. Orientation: Portrait
   3. Content:
      1. Research background
      2. Research details
      3. Research contribution (optional)
2. This year summer school is themed in conjunction with United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Hence, it is highly appreciated if you could craft your poster towards this direction.
3. We advise to keep all experimental data written for your poster to be precise and concise to ensure ease of understanding among all summer school attendees. You may use additional tools as such of tablet, handout or smartphone to assist your explanation if additional experimental data is deem necessary.​

Internet

We will bring wifi routers to the Summer School site and guest wifi service will be available there.

You can also connect to the Internet using "eduroam" service at the Summer School site if you have an eduroam account.

The hotel rooms has Internet access for free.  

Executive committee

This event is organized by the ACLS (Education Academy of Computational Life Science), Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan. http://www.acls.titech.ac.jp/en

Tokyo Tech students (committee leaders) 

• Chairperson: Wei Ming Lim

• Vice-chairperson: Hitoyoshi Yamashita

• Overseas students communication: Iou Ven Chang

• Cultural exchange: Alfedo Esquivel Chavez

• Abstract book:  Kei Hanafusa

• Poster session: Shohei Kitano

• Facility tour: Maierdan Palihati

• Lecture preparation: Yuichi Yokochi

• Group work: Aleksandar Zdravkovic

Tokyo Tech faculty members

• Hiroshi Iwasaki

• Yasunori Aizawa

• Junji Hirota

• Yutaka Akiyama

• Fumikazu Konishi

• Shotaro Ayukawa

• Shuntaro Chiba

• Takashi Harada

• Hidehiro Ito

• Yuri Matsuzaki

Co-organizer

Ms. Susi Varvayanis (BEST program, Cornell University)

Secretariat

• Tomoko Okada

• Yuka Tamaki